Ceremony vs Reception Attendance

Attendance now a days can vary on which guests can be present for the occasions. We do generally have 3 occasions on which we know guests count do go for catering purposes. It is nice to know if they can attend both or either one. This way your verified and not kept in the dark.

Well, we are hoping everything changes by the time we’re getting married. Since our ceremony and reception are in the same location. There are about 70 of us in total. I am assume that some of them will be late at the ceremony. So we’re taking that into consideration. 🤷🏽‍♀️

We weren't in this position per se, but while making our various plans, we sort of just decided to keep everything to immediate family for both - obviously ended up differently as we weren't able to have a reception at all. We also only ended up streaming the ceremony for my immediate family rather than open it up to all of our original guests even though that would have only been a minor change and we could have done it pretty easily.

I think I just feel like if you're going to go with the smaller wedding you should embrace it. I'm sure a lot of people will feel differently than me, but I would probably not want to go to just a ceremony unless it was someone I was very close to - like one of my best friends or an immediate family member. I just don't really care about other people's ceremonies lol . I'm all for celebrating with them but I personally feel like it's pretty intimate and I kind of find them strange in normal times like I'm peeping through a window into a couple's relationship and I'm not actually supposed to be there. But again I think I'm in the minority here and I'm sure a lot of people would love to go to a ceremony and absolutely love it even if they couldn't attend the reception.

Our case was a bit different than now as we were allowed to have 30% capacity for our ceremony, which was 75 people versus the 50 for the reception, but we took that as an opportunity to invite the people who weren't comfortable coming to the reception to still be there for the most important part. We also had 3 coming to the ceremony that we didn't have room for at the reception at first, but within the last week we were able to invite them to stay as we had others that were not able to make it. We did not want 25 extra for the ceremony (75 seemed like a lot suddenly given everything 😅) but it was wonderful to have that flexibility!